


Summer's Affection

by Alpha_Blue



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Academic Angst, Alternate Universe - College/University, Awkward Flirting, Glaciers can move faster, Lab Partners, M/M, Slow Burn, Veterinarian Zuko, more tags and characters added as we go, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29604543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alpha_Blue/pseuds/Alpha_Blue
Summary: This is a love story.There is no will they or won't they, there are no sitcom situations or massive misunderstandings.This is about two people meeting and dealing with their growing feelings for each other.This is dealing with the fears they have, this is dealing with the hopes they have for each other.This is the beginning of Sokka and Zuko's love story.Summer's Affection is about Sokka and Zuko meeting during a summer course in college, and falling for each other. All while dealing with the rigorous pace of a summer class and being lab partners.
Relationships: Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Kudos: 13
Collections: Zukka Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This would have been the prologue and the next chapter would have been chapter one, but I would be forever annoyed at myself for the chapters and chapter index to be 'misaligned' for lack of a better word. Specific chapter titles are out, cause I have a hard enough time naming normal things in a story. More often than not the first name of something ends up as an amalgamation of different words and punctuation. (I'm looking at you, character I had to name in a rush once, who somehow ended up with a apostrophe and two umlauts.)
> 
> For me, tying to come up with 24 chapter titles for Summer's Affection in time for posting would be rushing things. Naming things in a hurry is exactly how we end up with an unpronounceable mess as a chapter title.
> 
> And nobody wants that.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka gets his first glimpse of Zuko.

Sockka was many things.

An underappreciated comedian.

A lover of meat products.

A bother.

A self-proclaimed future polymath.

But he was not a morning person.

Which is why he currently found his vision swarming as he blinked furiously, trying to claw his way back into the land of fully conscious.

It wasn't his fault he was so tired, his mind just won't quit racing at night.

It would reveal the solution to a problem that had been plaguing him for days or weeks, always teasing faintly and tantalizingly just out of reach until right then and there. From groundbreaking ideas that could revolutionize and shape society, ideas that would disappear by the time he wakes in the morning if they weren't written down beforehand. And even that one time when he was seven and he accidentally called his teacher 'mom' in front of the entire class.

His mind just wouldn’t stop.

Calming tea, decaf coffee, meditating, melatonin gummies, listening to music, laying there in total silence waiting for sleep to finally overtake him, nothing worked. The only thing that had ever come close to truly knocking him out at a ‘respectable time’ as his sister would say, is working hard and working constantly -until a point near to exhaustion- so that the moment his head hits the pillow he falls asleep immediately.

It certainly didn't help Sokka that the usually too warm classroom in the bottom of the literature building was actually comfortingly warm today. The old and normally ratty auditorium chair was also comfortable this time. He had finally found one without a jagged lump in the middle of his back or a piece of metal poking into his thigh. The professor's voice, which was drowning and monotone on a good day, was easily fading into white noise.

Everything seemed to whisper with the promise of sleep.

Sokka regrouped for another valiant attempt at staving off sleep, but the professor moved onto a new topic for the lecture. A topic that Sokka had to search for five different times online just to try and make heads or tails of it.

“The most prominent and common analysis currently in academia, the one that most Scholars seem to mutually agree on, is that the three primary aspects that serve as the underlying foundation regarding the premise and processes that academia uses in the analysis of written characters are thus:”

Sokka blinked, and blinked again. He knew those were words, and he understood what they meant individually… but when arranged like that those words were just noise.

“Primarily, the comprehensive understanding that in the written world the characters need to be viewed from the knowledge of a self-actualizing individual,”

‘Maybe I should have spent more time trying to read the textbook,’ Sokka groaned, before burying his head into his arms, ‘It’s not like it’s my fault the textbook is more dense than lead and would be more help as a cutting board,’

“No matter how repugnant a transgression can be, every action can and should be linked transversely to every proceeding junction or activity and used to justify the latter archetypal development,”

Sokka lost the battle with his eyelids as the drowsiness fully subsumed him, just barely managing to hear the professor continue, “Furthermore-”

*****

"....no, you're not wearing any pants," Sokka mumbled for a moment before a loud, raspy voice pulled him from the half-dreaming half awake state. It took him a moment to blink his eyes and shake the sleep from his head, all the while the deep raspy voice that startled him back to the realm of the waking world was getting louder and more emphatic.

“If we use your own example and apply it to something even remotely as renowned like… _Love Amongst the Dragons_ , anyone could see that the remediation falls far shorter than if we use the self-actualizing analysis method that, as you even said, most of academia and scholars use,”

Finally coherent enough, Sokka craned his neck around the auditorium, searching out the source of the raspy voice that was now obviously debating the professor, even if Sokka was uncertain of just what exactly they were talking about.

It didn't take him long to spot the source of the raspy speaker halfway across the auditorium, the emphatic geautring from the speaker was helpful with that.

The speaker was obviously a freshman, the only people in this old auditorium that weren't in their first year of college were the professor; and their teaching assistant. This freshman had medium-length shaggy black hair that seemed to almost fall into his eyes. It's always hard to tell the height of someone when they're seated, but if Sokka had to make a guess, he would place them at no more than five foot ten.

His right side was facing Sokka and he watched as the freshman gestured increasingly emphatically as he spoke. Sokka felt a little sorry for the brown haired girl with a long singular braid to his left that had scooted as far away from the speaker as possible, to get out of range of his purposely flailing arms.

The freshman moved his head a bit more and Sokka saw two things about him. 

He had a massive angry looking scar covering his left eye, to the point where even from this distance it looked like the eye might have trouble opening fully. Despite being halfway across the auditorium from Sokka, the scar looked old and almost settled into the skin, like it had been there for years by now.

The other thing Sokka saw was his eyes. Sokka had heard of and seen people who claimed to have gold eyes, but they were always more of an auburn or bright emerald.

But his, his were golden.

Not maroon or dull amber, but a vibrant liquid gold.

And despite being a good forty feet away, the passion and conviction in them was striking. Whatever he was debating with the professor about, this freshman had the conviction of knowing he was right.

The professor somehow managed to keep a monotone pitch even as they debated back. Even and flat, despite somehow simultaneously talking down to the student.

Most freshmen would have cowered under the weight of a classroom watching their debate with a professor, but not golden eyes. If anything he seemed to get more worked up and passionate the longer the debate went.

The professor held up his hand, and the student paused whatever reply he was forming, “As entertaining and informative as this debate has been, it has started to stray too far from the lecture at hand,” the professor spoke, “Despite how enjoyable this has been, it would be unfair to the rest of the students to devore more class time to this topic,”

Golden eyes seem to deflate a bit, before the professor added in his monotone, “Just serving as a reminder to the everyone, that any student is more than welcome, and that I actively encourage you all, to come to my office after class or during office hours to continue any debate, or ask any questions if a student is not comfortable speaking in front of the class,”

The freshmen nodded and seemed to relax a little back into his chair, the girl on his left shifted fully onto her seat in such a fluid and subtle moment that if Sokka hadn't been watching, he never would have noticed.

A soft, warm feeling bubbled up into his chest as Sokka listened to the Professor resume his presentation and lecture. All of a sudden, his 7:45 a.m. literary analysis classes weren't looking so dull.

‘This class might even be interesting now,’ he thought to himself as a small smile spread across his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will go live around the same time on Wednesday, February 24th.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The machinations of the universe are set in motion, the pieces start to take their place on the board, and a collision course with Destiny begins.
> 
> Zuko has a meeting with his advisor, and it begins to lay the groundwork for the entire story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Conceivably this chapter could have been rolled into the next one, but I tend to find excessive perspective shifts in my own writing, within a single chapter, distracting.

_One year, five months, three weeks, and four days later._

Zuko trudged along the campus quad, his auburn hoodie bunched up securely against him as a small black bag hung and bounced from one of his shoulders. He was forgoing his usual jeans with aesthetic holes in them, in the attempt to keep the last residual tendrils of the cold winter at bay. It was still colder than he liked, but spring was fast approaching.

His mind wandered as he let the rhythm and beat of the music from his headphones move through him, keeping his mind occupied as he navigated through the maze like hallways of the zoology department almost on pure instinct.

His eyes roamed over the various bulletins posted by clubs and classes and the administration, not so much reading the words as seeing the colors and patterns in the ordered chaos of paper and cardboard.

Taking a left Zuko found himself near the outside wall again, shivering a little as he hunched down into his hoodie from the cold seeping in through the brickwork and glass. 

He flicked his golden eyes over the office number, confirming he was in fact standing outside 318q, before leaning far enough in front of the open doorway to catch his advisors eye. Hei Bei was with another student, but gave him a little nod of acknowledgement before Zuko ducked back and out of sight.

In well-practiced movements born of repetition, Zuko crossed the narrow hallway and leaned against the wall underneath a heating vent. He made a soft sound of contentment as the warmth washed over him.

Zuko buried himself a bit more into his hoodie and turned up the music from his headphones to drown out the half urge to snoop on what the other student and Hei Bei were talking about. He figured it was just common decency.

After all, _he_ wouldn't really want someone else listening to **his** advising meetings. It wasn't like he had something to hide, far from it. Zuko had nothing to hide at all, anymore.

It just wasn't anyone else's business.

*****

He was pulled back into the real world as he saw movement out of the corner of his right eye coming from the office. He stopped the song currently playing and caught the tail end of the student thanking Hei Bei for the help with next semester. ‘Well, we’re here for the same reason then,’ thought Zuko as the student walked out and into the hallway.

The student, who turned out to be a young woman, thanked Hei Bei and walked out of the small office. Seeing Zuko standing in the hallway, she looked him up and down before giving him a small grin while she pushed a strand of hair behind her left ear, blushing faintly as she tried to make eye contact.

'Been there, done that. Definitely don't want to do it again,' Zuko thought to himself as deliberately ignored her and stepped into Hei Bei's office. To Zuko, stepping into this office always felt like he was almost walking right into a clearing in the middle of a forest.

The small office was cozy. With soft light streaming in from a large window about chest high, taking up most of the back wall. Bookshelves lined one wall, while a mix of wooden filing cabinets and shelving lined the other. The shelves contain a myriad of trinkets, memorabilia, and a mix of photos of Professor Hei Bei with students she has mentored and animals she treated and befriended over the course of her very long life.

Zuko brushed his headphones back and off his ears, until they were resting around his neck as he shifted his weight from foot to foot in the familiar office. He had just enough time to wonder how many hours he had spent in this office when Hei Bei spoke with a wide, warm smile on her face, “Please Zuko, do have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Unlike Muzion, I don’t bite,”

Zuko’s eyes darted to one of the photos in her collection, specifically that of Hei Bei kneeling next to a lizard almost twice her size, as he sat down in the only other available chair in the office. Despite being taken over twenty years ago, Hei Bei looked almost identical. The only clue to the intervening passage of time was the change in clothing style, though she did always have a very strong personal look- regardless of what the rest of the world was racing after as the current trendy fad.

“What brings one of my best students to my office today?” Hei Bei said with a sincerity that always surprised him, no matter how often he encountered it. She smiled warmly at Zuko, as he dug around in his bag for his tablet, which served well as a distraction from the complaint that he never really knew how to respond to.

Finding the firm plastic case, Zuko pulled his tablet out and set it on his lap before addressing Hei Bei, “Thank you Professor. I’m here for my annual advising meeting before registration starts for next semester,” he paused for a moment, “Well, before I start registering for my classes anyway,”

“It is Spring again? My my my, how time flies,” Hei Bei hummed to herself as she started turning towards her workstation, "Let me pull up your degree audit, and we can start planning your next semester,"

"Let us see here," Hei Bei murmured as she scrolled and clicked through the various menus, "Ah! There you are," she paused as she read through the information, before double-checking with Zuko that it was accurate, "According this, you are currently taking Organic Chemistry II, Animal Husbandry 215, Literature 257: Greatest Literary Works of the Past 75 Years, Genetics 201, and Advanced Animal Biology?"

Zuko nodded as he turned on his tablet and logged onto his student profile for the University, "Concert, and you were right. I'm enjoying Advanced Animal Biology a lot more than the class description made it seem like I would,"

Hei Bei broke out into a wide grin at that, "I am truly glad to hear that,"

Zuko smiled softly and refocused on his tablet, "I have done a little bit of looking over the schedule for next semester before this meeting, and I'm thinking about taking Applied Zoology 261 and Toxicology 207," he paused for a moment and shrugged before continuing, "I'm not really sure what other classes to take though,"

Hei Bei hummed again, but deeper and with more purpose then her previous one. Zuko watched on as his advisor poked around and investigated something in his degree audit, the length of the lull in the conversation starting to make him a little nervous.

Hei Bei pulled another tab up, before turning towards Zuko, "You still plan to complete your degree in four years, do you not?"

Zuko blinked, that was not a question he had been expecting, "Uh, I mean yes? I-that's what I'm planning on? Graduating after my next two years,"

Hei Bei nodded, "That is what I thought, but I wanted to double-check before discussing a small bump in the path following that plan,"

Zuko felt his lungs drop into his stomach as a myriad of worst-case scenarios started racing through his mind. His catastrophizing was abruptly cut off as he forced himself to refocused on what Hei Bei was saying, "---Comparative Animal Evolutionary Physiology 137," 

"I'm sorry, what about that class?"

It is a requirement for Applied Zoology 261, as well as a requirement for graduating your veterinary program.

Understanding dawned on Zuko, "So I take Comparative Animal Evolutionary Physiology during the next semester, and I take Applied Zoology 261 in the following spring?"

"Ah, unfortunately this is where the little bump I mentioned comes in. Applied Zoology is only taught during the fall semesters, and Animal Husbandry is only taught in spring semesters,"

"What am I going to do?" Zuko asked.

"That is up to you, and you have two options. Either take an additional semester after your four years, or take a summer course,"

Zuko thought about it as he poked around the various schedules on his tablet, before nodding to himself and looking up, "I'll go with the summer class. I would rather give up an entire summer, instead of needing to take an extra semester for a single class,"

Hei Bei smiled reassuringly at Zuko, "Then as your advisor, I officially advise you to take that class during this summer’s summer semester. It will allow you to preserve the rest of your schedule uninterrupted," 

Zuko pulled up Comparative Animal Evolutionary Physiology 137 in the class list, navigating through the enrollment process before looking back up, "I have successfully enrolled for it," he paused as something occurred to him, "Summer registration started two weeks ago, didn't it?"

"Indeed it did, and summer courses tend to fill up quickly," Hei Bei said as she turned back to her computer, "For your other classes next semester, I would recommend taking Biostatistics 278, and Pathology 311 . You _could_ take your last chemistry class, but I would advise against it considering you will already be taking a biostatistics class. Let us not overburden you with more math than necessary in the same semester," she said with a playful tint to her voice.

Zuko chuckled, feeling significantly more relaxed as he poked around to the various classes Hei Bei recommended and read through the descriptions, before enrolling in each of them.

He let out a satisfied sigh as relief washed through him, "Once again, thank you for your help Professor Hei Bei. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't my advisor,"

Hei Bei chuckled warmly, "You give me too much credit Zuko, and you underestimate yourself. If I was not your advisor, you would simply have another one.

Zuko relented, but thought to himself, somewhat skeptically, 'Maybe, but it wouldn't be the same,' he double-checked the time, before turning off his tablet and putting it back into his bag, "Thank you professor. As much as I wish I could stay and continue talking, I have class in twenty five minutes that I need to start heading to,"

Hei Bei nodded, "Why of course Zuko, if you have any questions that come up about your classes feel free to stop by or send me an email,"

Thanking Hei Bei once again, Zuko slipped out of her office and started tracing his route back through the building. Shivering a little as a gust of wind hit him when he stepped outside, Zuko pulled his phone out and tapped on Uncle's contact.

The line rang twice before the familiar voice of his uncle emerged from the speakers, _"Zuko! How did your advising session go?"_

The warmth radiating from his uncle's voice filled Zuko and pushed away his lingering thoughts about the temperature, "It went just fine Uncle. I'm registered for next semester, and a course this summer,"

_"Oh? A summer course does sound interesting. A healthy variety in life leads to a healthy and diverse spirit,"_

Zuko nodded before remembering that Uncle wasn't nearby and couldn't actually see him, "And because it's a requirement for graduation, and for a class I want to take next semester,"

There was a brief pause on the other side of the line, before Uncle Iroh burst out laughing. His surprise and mirth brought a smile to Zuko's face, _"Oh! I suppose those are two very important reasons for taking a class Nephew,"_

Despite talking to each other two days ago, Zuko spent the rest of his walk across campus to his last class of the day talking to and catching up with Uncle. 

A faint smile lingered on Zuko's face for the rest of the day, until his head hit the pillow that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will go live around the same time on Wednesday, March 3rd.


End file.
